


As you were

by prevaricator



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Non-Famous, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst with a Happy Ending, Aromantic Do Kyungsoo | D.O, Asexual Do Kyungsoo | D.O, Asexuality, M/M, Queerplatonic Relationships, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-28
Updated: 2017-02-28
Packaged: 2018-09-27 10:07:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10005119
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prevaricator/pseuds/prevaricator
Summary: The tattoo on Jongdae's little finger tells him who his soulmate is. He's spent the last three years thinking it's incorrect.(Or: Kyungsoo and Jongdae take some time to learn that not all soulmate relationships are alike.)





	

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings for swearing and some unhealthy alcohol culture.

Kim Jongdae has a soulmate. This is a fact, at least as long as one buys into the soulmate deal. He even knows who it is. They’re not on speaking terms with one another.

These days he can go for weeks at a time without sparing the whole situation more than the occasional passing thought brought on by someone staring too long at his soulmate tattoo in public, but at this particular time of year it gets difficult to ignore.

It’s fresh graduate hiring season at Jongdae’s workplace again, and he’s been charged with shepherding the fresh blood around through the bureaucratic checklist of their first days in the office. Half of them are blatantly glancing at his hands before his boss has even introduced him properly. They’d all glanced at Donghae’s hands first, but the ring on Donghae’s ring finger negates the need to look for any length of time at the tattoo on the pinky finger next to it.

Jongdae is ringless. Knowing that the new people won’t stop looking until they’ve figured out the pattern of his own tattoo, just in case it matches one of the their own, he makes a show of lifting his ID badge with his right hand. 

“Make sure your badge is visible at all times,” he says, like that’s what they care about. One or two appear to be listening attentively, at least. The rest stare at his pinky with far more attention than it deserves.

Jongdae’s tattoo is just two plain black bands, one several times the thickness of the other, wrapping around his pinky like a ring. It shouldn’t take long to figure out, but the simplicity of it is so rare that people tend to stare for an unwarranted amount of time out of shock. He’s even been accused of hiding his real tattoo under a fake one, but he’s not. 

The tattoo on his finger is his real soulmate tattoo, and there’s someone out there with a matching one. 

He’s not sure what it is about this particular incident that pushes him to reexamine a fact he’s known for years. Two years ago, he’d still have looked at all of their fingers, just in case. Maybe there was someone else with a matching tattoo; maybe the tattoo was, by some cosmic mistake, repeated on two different pairs of soulmates’ fingers, and Jongdae had just coincidentally met the wrong match. Maybe there was a difference that he hadn’t seen, in that handful of seconds that make up the one time he saw the tattoo that matched his.

He’d given up those hopes a year ago, though, and now he only pays attention to the odd people out. They’re on the elevator to the badge office when he catches one such person. 

It’s a young man, practically still a kid, tall and strikingly good looking. This particular man didn’t glance at Jongdae’s finger once during his talk, but his own hand, once Jongdae has located the one with the soulmate tattoo, is devoid of rings. His tattoo is a pretty cloud of what look like birds circling his pinky.

He catches Jongdae looking and sort of half shrugs, like he’s not interested but trying to be polite. 

“You’re not taken, but you’re not looking,” Jongdae comments while they wait for others to be fingerprinted and photographed, when he’s got a pause in between questions from the new hires. He’d sidled up, gotten to know the kid in the friendly way that makes Jongdae an excellent salesman. Sehun, as his name turns out to be, is reserved, but he speaks plenty when spoken to.

Sehun’s face falls out of its polite half smile. 

“I know who it is,” he says. Pauses, looking uncomfortable. “It’s, um…”

Shaking his head, Jongdae holds up a hand to stop him. “Don’t worry about it. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.”

The kid’s shoulders drop from where they’d inched up around his ears, but his eyes are glittering suspiciously. It must still be fresh, whatever happened.

“I know who mine is, too,” Jongdae says, flashing his own ringless hand at the kid. He would have appreciated knowing other people in his boat, back when the pain of being rejected by his soulmate was fresh.

Sehun stares, but the badge office staff call him over to have his picture taken just then. By the time he comes back, Jongdae has moved on to getting to know another of the newbies, this time a girl named Juhyun. 

And so maybe it’s Sehun who’s the catalyst for Jongdae’s decision. He’d just looked so sad, and it reminds Jongdae of his own sadness from several years ago, back when he used to duck around corners to pull his face back together when the urge to cry hit him at work. 

They go out for the customary drinks with the new hires that night, and Jongdae’s eyes keep catching on Sehun. He looks increasingly dismayed as people keep pouring the newbies drinks, determined to get them drunk off their asses, and Jongdae wonders if he’s going to break down in tears once he’s drunk enough. There’s another newbie who’d also given Jongdae sad vibes sitting two seats over, and he sighs. 

He’s never sure why it doesn’t occur to the bosses that starting a new job is a traumatic event. Yes, it’s a wonderful company, and yes, most of these kids are excited to be working there, but they’ve also just made a huge life decision. Some are just realizing that they’ll hardly see the family they left behind in their hometowns over the next several decades, and some may have had to commit to long-distance relationships while their soulmates pursue their own careers or finish school far away. Those who haven’t found soulmates may have broken up with temporary lovers in situations made inconvenient by the job offer, and they may have just discovered that it’s possible for someone other than your soulmate to break your heart. 

In short, there are a lot of reasons why they might not be feeling up to getting drunk out of their minds around new colleagues tonight. After his own disastrous first day, it’s become Jongdae’s self-appointed responsibility to make sure the event isn’t too much torture for those particular people.

Junmyeon follows Jongdae’s gaze eventually, looking at Sehun for a second and then back at Jongdae with a wry smile.

“If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you had the hots for him,” he says. “But I do know better, so what’s his sob story?”

Jongdae snorts and waves his tattooed hand at Junmyeon. “Something like mine.”

Without further prompting, Junmyeon gets up to kidnap Sehun, pulling Chaeyoung, the sad girl two spots down from Sehun, along as well. As a team lead, it’s easier for him to pull this part off than Jongdae. 

“Okay, table secret,” Junmyeon whispers when they sit down. “The soju bottle with the red sticker at the bottom isn’t actually soju. Let us know if you need a break.”

The two newbies relax visibly, and Junmyeon and Jongdae pull them into a harmless conversation about sports and movies. There’s a trick to this game in that they have to remain rowdy enough not to arouse suspicion from the other tables, lest someone come over and pour them all drinks, but it’s easy enough for Junmyeon and Jongdae to manage when they’re even just a little bit tipsy.

They stay until the bosses start leaving, well after Jongdae would have liked to be in bed. Junmyeon locates a group of female new hires heading in Chaeyoung’s direction and sends her off with them. He and Sehun both live in the same direction as Jongdae, so they all decide to walk together. Jongdae’s not so wealthy that he can afford a cab without making other sacrifices, Sehun probably has no money, and Junmyeon won’t pay for all of them because Jongdae won’t let him.

“Sunbae,” Sehun says as they go. He’s developed a lisp, from either the drinking or the exhaustion. “Can I ask what happened?”

He points to Jongdae’s hand to get the message across. Junmyeon’s eyebrows inch up his head, but he doesn’t say anything. 

“He was my roommate for two years in college,” Jongdae says. “I had no idea. He kept his tattoo hidden under a ring because he didn’t want a relationship. I only found out because I spilled coffee on him one day and yanked his glove off to keep the coffee from burning his hand.”

The ring had gone with the glove, and there on Kyungsoo’s finger had been Jongdae’s own tattoo.

“What the fuck?” Sehun says.

“That was the general feeling,” Jongdae says.

“Were you in love with him, though? I mean, living with your soulmate for two years…”

It’s an awfully invasive question to ask your new senior at work, but Jongdae decides to give the kid a break on the assumption that he’s got his own awful story going on.

“That’s the weird part. I mean, I really liked him, but it wasn’t intense in the way it is for all my friends with soulmates. I thought about kissing him maybe three times total in the whole two years? I didn’t want to jump his bones or write him poetry or anything. He was more like a really close friend, I guess.”

“So what happened? He just said he didn’t want a relationship and left?” Sehun asks.

Jongdae shakes his head. “I was so angry, I stayed at Junmyeonnie-hyung’s place while I finished school and found a job. I haven’t spoken to him since the day I found out.”

Three years later, he still feels the kick of betrayal at the sight of two familiar lines wrapped around Kyungsoo’s pinky. It’s dulled with time, and with the realization that they’d been awfully young, but he’s not sure the hurt will ever go away entirely. 

 

Over dinner a week later, Baekhyun starts talking about another nice girl he knows, one whose soulmate died in a car accident two years ago, who’d be amenable to meeting. Jongdae sighs and shakes his head.

“I need to take a break,” he says.

“A break? You haven’t even been on a date in over six months,” Baekhyun says. “So unless you’ve started having one night stands without telling me, you need to get laid, man.”

“No, I don’t,” Jongdae says. The truth is that he doesn’t care about getting laid. He’s let Baekhyun set him up on dates in the past, but it’s only ever because he’s lonely. The sex that comes along with it tends to happen more because it’s expected than because Jongdae really wants it, lately. 

Baekhyun looks offended, “Yes, you do. You’re a healthy young man.”

 _Do you say these things to Kyungsoo?_ Jongdae almost asks, but he doesn’t. He doesn’t want to give away what he’s thinking just yet, and he’s fed up with the continuous input he receives on his situation from people who don’t understand it. Even Minseok and Junmyeon are getting tiresome, and they’re a lot less pushy than Baekhyun.

The thing that he’s thinking is that maybe he’s been misinterpreting what a soulmate is supposed to be all along. 

 

 

The following day is Saturday. Jongdae rolls out of bed at a leisurely hour and heads to the kitchen to make coffee and breakfast, feeling happy despite his recent thoughts. 

Weekend mornings are his favorite thing, lately. His apartment is amazing, with large, south-facing windows that let oodles of glorious sunlight into his living area on days like today. It’s hot in the summer, but wonderful the rest of the year. At the moment they’re in the cool days of early spring, and Jongdae likes nothing more than to bask in the warm sunlight when he’s home. 

He turns on some music to sing along to while he cooks, serenading his plants when the food doesn’t need immediate attention. Then he settles at the table and checks the news on his phone while eats. None of the headlines catch his attention, though, so when he hits the bottom of the page he ends up thinking instead.

There is something missing from Jongdae’s life, but it’s not sex. It’s not even love, or at least not the romantic kind, not really. The only thing he wants, on days like today, is for someone to be here, in his apartment, living out a life with him.

He catches himself fantasizing about silly little things, like a pair of bare feet half swallowed by pajama pants that are too long, padding around the apartment. It’s a very specific pair of bare feet, smallish and sturdy. 

Jongdae’s never sure why that’s the thing about Kyungsoo that sticks with him the most after two years of living together, the way his bare feet looked on lazy weekend mornings. There are other things, of course, like the way he’d tip his head down and look up at things when he needed to see them clearer or the way he’d curl up against Jongdae on the couch with a book (though that last one involves his feet, too, dangling over the edge of the seat). 

It’s easy enough to find Kyungsoo’s social media. It would probably be even easier just to ask Baekhyun for his contact information, but Jongdae doesn’t want Baekhyun to know about this. If they meet and it doesn’t work out, he wouldn’t put it past Baekhyun to harass Kyungsoo about it endlessly, because Baekhyun doesn’t get it. 

So he sends a quick message, just _Hi, how are you?_ then gets up to do his dishes with shaking hands, trying not to think about how it’s been three years since they last spoke or how poorly their last conversation went. Knowing Kyungsoo, Jongdae won’t hear back for days if he hears back at all, so he curls up with a book and tries to ignore his phone for a few hours.

 **Do Kyungsoo:** _I’m fine, how are you?_

The message is waiting when he finishes his book, awfully early for Kyungsoo. Jongdae taps the message to see that it’s only been twenty minutes since it was sent.

 **Kim Jongdae:** _I’m doing well. Can we meet up sometime?_

 **Do Kyungsoo:** _Okay._

 

Another week later, Do Kyungsoo sits in Jongdae’s sunny apartment, hands circling a cup of tea but not actually touching it, because it’s still too hot. His pinky finger is shockingly bare, though Jongdae supposes there’s no need to hide his tattoo anymore.

Kyungsoo looks like Jongdae remembers, but a little older. He’s still short and sturdy. He still wears a no-nonsense haircut with unassuming clothing, currently dark pants with a black sweater. He’s still handsome. He’s still a comforting presence to Jongdae, somehow, even while a part of Jongdae remains furious with him.

He’s also still quiet, and despite having had a week to plan out what to say, Jongdae is at a loss. He’s put it off as long as he could by making tea and locating snacks to put out, but now there’s nothing else to do.

Sitting down at the table, he just watches Kyungsoo for a moment. Kyungsoo watches back.

“Do you miss me at all?” Jongdae asks, finally. It comes out in a tiny, pathetic voice and makes him sound desperate as fuck, and he just wants to hide from Kyungsoo once he’s said it. Through all the confusion, though, it’s the one feeling he can identify that he needs to know is reciprocated. If Kyungsoo doesn’t even miss Jongdae, then Jongdae is ready to call the soulmate marks utter bullshit and resign himself to a life of dating other sad people.

“I do,” Kyungsoo says. “All the time, Jongdae. I tried to tell you, but you blocked my number.”

“I was angry. I still am,” Jongdae says. 

“I know,” Kyungsoo responds. “You’re right to be angry. And I’m sorry. What I did was shitty.”

“Why did you do it?” Jongdae asks, shocked when tears prick his eyes at the end of the question. He hasn’t cried over this in well over a year.

“At first it was because I was really anti-soulmate. I’d been wearing that ring for years before we met. I knew from the first time we met that we matched, but I also knew I couldn’t have the kind of relationship that most people had with their soulmates. You dated people and had sex like a normal person, so I thought that was what you wanted.”

“But even after two years, you couldn’t just tell me the truth? You knew how hard I was looking for my soulmate. You could have spared me so much energy.”

All that time, Jongdae had been checking the pinky fingers of the left hands of every damn person he met for the tattoo that matched the one on his right hand. He’d put a picture of it on a matching service that identified similar tattoos, to no avail. All of that with Kyungsoo next to him, aware that Jongdae wouldn’t find what he was looking for, and he’d never said a word.

“I know,” Kyungsoo says. “I was stupid. By the time I realized I needed to tell you, I liked you so much that I was afraid of losing you when I did. So I kept hoping that I’d magically become sexually attracted to you one day, and then I could just tell you and give you what you wanted.

“But I should have told you,” Kyungsoo continues. “It never occurred to me that there might be any solution I couldn’t think of myself.”

Jongdae nods and sighs. “To be honest, you were right to worry. At the time I had no idea what asexuality really was, or that asexual soulmates were a real thing. I thought sex was just part of relationships, and I didn’t even realize that I don’t really care for it. I might have been kind of nasty to be with, back then.”

“You don’t care for sex?” Kyungsoo asks. 

Jongdae shakes his head. “I don’t dislike sex, but I’m usually only in it for the company and affection.”

“Oh,” Kyungsoo says. He sits back in his chair like this is a surprise, and it hits Jongdae that it’s been a really, really long time since he’s spoken to Kyungsoo. He’d been aware of the fact, of course, but in an abstract sort of way that didn’t connect all of the repercussions of such a long period of time. There’s a lot that Kyungsoo doesn’t know about Jongdae, now, and vice versa. 

“I’m sorry,” Jongdae says. “For running away and taking three years to contact you.”

“Thank you for acknowledging that. I know I’m not blameless, but it’s kind of sucked,” Kyungsoo says, looking down into his cup of tea. It’s not quite forgiveness, but Jongdae hasn’t quite forgiven Kyungsoo, either. With a wry smile, Kyungsoo lifts his hand and wiggles the tattooed pinky. “Maybe we’re soulmates because we’re both assholes.”

Jongdae smiles tightly back. “I think we’re soulmates because we’re both what the other person needs. Assuming it isn’t all bullshit, of course.”

“Then do you want to try…something?” Kyungsoo says, hesitantly. “I don’t know if I can do any kind of dating, but we worked pretty well as roommates, didn’t we?”

“Something, yeah,” Jongdae says. “We should try something. Give these tattoos the benefit of the doubt?”

 

 

Another year, another set of new hires. Jongdae notes with satisfaction this time that nobody stares at his hand for any length of time, now that he’s got a ring. 

Sehun joins Jongdae and Junmyeon at their table at the newbie torture party, this time, smiling into his drink when he sees Jongdae surveying the new faces for sad people in need of rescue. Dahyun is awfully quiet, and the one named Taehyung has been frowny all day, though that might be a case of resting bitchface—in moments when he’s not frowning off into space, he’s as hyperactive as Baekhyun. It’s still too early to intervene, anyway, so Jongdae settles back to start in on the drinks with his neighbors. 

Sehun nudges Jongdae’s hand and points at the ring he’s started to wear. Jongdae wiggles it at him and grins.

“You worked it out with your soulmate?” Sehun asks.

Jongdae nods. “It turns out that we both wanted the same thing.”

It would have been nice if they’d met when they both already understood what they wanted, but at this point Jongdae won’t fuss. Kyungsoo had moved in with him in early fall, after a million ‘dates’ that were mostly them living out their weekends in each other’s apartments.

Jongdae spent months gathering arguments to get Kyungsoo on board with exchanging rings, or at least allowing Jongdae to wear one so that people would stop staring at his hand. It had seemed dangerously close to a grand romantic gesture for Kyungsoo, who’s only a little bit more on board with romance than he is with sex, but it turned out all he’d had to do was ask. Kyungsoo had agreed to it readily, citing his distaste for the constant stares of people looking for their own soulmates.

“Besides,” he’d said, smiling at Jongdae’s shock. “If our tattoos don’t mean anything about romance, why should our rings? We’re just telling the world we’re us.”

(Which had, honestly, sounded really fucking romantic to Jongdae, but he gets what Kyungsoo meant. They’re them, and on any given day they’re not anything romantic, just two people living out their lives in each other’s orbits.) 

Tomorrow he’ll nap off his hangover with his head in Kyungsoo’s lap while Kyungsoo reads a book. Kyungsoo will laugh at his whining about whatever awful things happen at this party (currently Dahyun looks dangerously close to crying, and Jongdae nudges Junmyeon to set the intervention in motion). They’ll make lunch, and eat lunch, and then they’ll probably read some more or watch a movie. If they’re feeling adventurous, they’ll hit up the library or invite someone over for dinner. 

It’s a quiet sort of life they lead, and it’s perfect.


End file.
